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Thomas Friedman, the three-time Pulitzer Prize winner for Middle East reporting seems to never be shy at demonstrating his complete ignorance, his willful naivete, and racist views on the region.

Friedman wrote an op-ed on May 22, 2018 that he “appreciate[s] the Gazans’ sense of injustice. Why should they pay with their ancestral homes for Jewish refugees who lost theirs in Germany or Iraq?” I am perhaps slightly glad he laid out that the basis for his sympathies was on a completely flawed view of reality.

Complete Ignorance

The international community made a declaration that the Jewish state should be reestablished in the Jewish holy land decades before the Holocaust. The San Remo Conference in 1920 and the Mandate of Palestine of 1922 made it clear in international law that the Jews had a long history throughout the holy land, not just in the western part of the holy land.

More specifically, to correct Freidman:

1. Jews came back to reestablish themselves in their holy land. They did not come as interlopers into someone else’s homes.

2. The movement of Jews to Palestine was established in international law. This was not a Jewish invasion or act of Britain alone.

3. The international laws were passed decades before World War II and the Holocaust. Israel was not created as a reaction to the Holocaust.

4. Jews did not seek to evict Arabs. It was the Arabs that went to war with the Jews to keep them from moving back into their Jewish holy land. The state of Israel welcomed all Arabs to become citizens of the state and help in its development. The 160,000 that stayed (18% of the population in 1948) have grown to 25% of the population in 2017. The Arabs that left in 1948 went to war to destroy Israel and continue to threaten it generations later.

5. The Jews that left homes in Germany and Iraq were hunted and persecuted by their governments. The Arabs that left homes in Israel were those that opted to launch a civil war to destroy a new country at its rebirth.

Friedman inverted plain facts. He proclaimed his sympathies with the Palestinians on the basis of lies.

Further, his prescription for a solution was packed with both falsehoods and racist ideas.

Willful Naivete

7. Hamas is not just “the Palestinian Islamist organization that rules the Gaza Strip.” It is recognized as a terrorist group by the US, Israel and many countries. And it was voted into a majority of parliament by Palestinians with full knowledge of these facts including having the most anti-Semitic charter in the world.

8. To state that Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority is “secular, more moderate” than Hamas is to compare the ninth and fifth rings of Hell. Abbas is way more radical and extreme than Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (who Friedman paints as being just like Hamas). Abbas is a Holocaust denier, denies the history of Jews in the holy land, calls for a country to be Jew-free, has laws that call for the death sentence for any Arab selling land to a Jew, pays for people to kill Israeli Jews, and names tournaments and squares after terrorists. How does this man and the PA remotely resemble anything moderate?

Racist Views

Friedman added to his fiction with jaundiced views about Jews and Arabs.

9. Why is Gaza Israel’s responsibility? Israel left the region in 2005 for the local Palestinian Arabs to rule themselves (for the first time in their history). Is the US responsible for Mexico’s welfare? Why isn’t Egypt called upon to handle the derelict region at its border? Does Friedman believe that Jews are uniquely responsible for neighbors?

10. “Two states for two people” as Friedman suggests means either that Jews can become a minority in Palestine the same way that Arabs are a minority in Israel, or it means that each country must be “pure.” Is Friedman suggesting that Israel expel its 2 million Arabs or is he suggesting 1.5 states for Arabs and 0.5 for Jews because Jews should be banned from the western part of the holy land, but not the Arabs in Israel? Either way, it sounds pretty racist to either expel non-Jews or ban Jews.

Fantasy

Friedman has not internalized that the Palestinians are no closer to welcoming their Jewish neighbors today than they were 100 years ago. He posits that the most antisemitic people should approach the border “with an olive branch in one hand and a sign in Hebrew and Arabic in the other, saying, “Two states for two peoples: We, the Palestinian people of Gaza, want to sign a peace treaty with the Jewish people — a two-state solution based on the 1967 borders, with mutually agreed adjustments.” What a moron.

Maybe the US special forces should have shown up at Osama bin Laden’s house with girl scout cookies and asked him nicely to stop killing thousands of people. Maybe he could propose that the Bashar al-Assad, the president of Syria should drop cotton candy on his people rather than chemical weapons. Friedman’s recommendations could have been written by a second grader with no comprehension of the world.

But Friedman knows the facts. He deliberately lifted from the deceased former leader of the PLO Yasser Arafat’s (fungus be upon him) 1974 speech at the United Nations: “I come to you bearing an olive branch in one hand and a freedom fighter’s gun in the other. Do not let the olive branch fall from my hand.” Friedman chose to ignore the plain and consistent fact that the Palestinians have chosen violence over coexistence with the Jewish State and put forward a non-solution that fails to address the situation.

The acting-President of the Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas gave another one of his long anti-semitic speeches on April 30, 2018. Much of the western world condemned the speech as something brand new and vile that should not only be condemned, but also marked Abbas as unfit to remain as the leader of the Stateless Arabs from Palestine (SAPs). The condemnation was so widesread that Abbas issued some sort of apology a few days later.

Abbas is an Antisemite

Let’s be clear about some things that the media is not telling you:

Abbas did not just say that Jews were themselves responsible for Nazi Germany killing them in the Holocaust, he said that Jews were responsible for ALL of the massacres that had befallen them throughout history. Abbas said “The Jews who moved to Eastern and Western Europe had been subjected to a massacre by one country or another every 10-15 years since the 11th century until the Holocaust in Germany. Okay? But why was this happening? They say that it was happening because they are Jews…. The anti-Jewish (sentiments) was not because of their religion but because of their function in society, which had to do with usury, banks, and so on.”

Abbas whitewashed 1,400 years of Arab antisemitism. After Abbas’ harangue against Jews in Europe and Russia, he said “I challenge you to find a single incident against Jews just because they were Jews in 1,400 years in any Arab country.” He should probably review some basic history from the founding of Islam in the seventh century when the Muslim prophet Mohammed slaughtered Jews in Saudi Arabia, to every country that Muslims invaded in the subsequent centuries, where Jews were often given the choice between conversion or death. Tunisia 1016. Morocco 1033. The list is long.

Abbas said that Jews were shipped to Palestine because the host countries wanted to get rid of them. Abbas said that many world leaders including Lord Balfour from the United Kingdom, Adolf Hitler in Germany and the foreign minister of Russia all hated the Jews and wanted to get rid of them so encouraged them to move to Palestine.

Abbas said he is disgusted by the Israeli national anthem. The essence of the Israeli national anthem is about the longing of Jews to return to their homeland. Abbas argued that the anthem is a farce. “Their [Jews] narrative about coming to this country [Palestine] because of their longing for Zion or whatever -we’re tired of hearing this.“

Abbas reiterated that the Jews have no connection to Palestine. Abbas has long argued that Jews have no history or connection to the land of Israel. He has made the arguments before the United Nations and to Palestinians. He did so again in April 2018: “The truth is that this [Zionism] is a colonial enterprise aimed at planting a foreign body in this region.” He added that the European Jews have no historical connection to Palestine since they are all descendants of Khazars that converted to Judaism in the eighth century.

Abbas made a non-apology. Abbas did not really apologize for his anti-Semitic comments a few days later. He apologized that people were offended by his comments. “If people were offended by my statement in front of the P.N.C., especially people of the Jewish faith, I apologize to them. I would like to assure everyone that it was not my intention to do so, and to reiterate my full respect for the Jewish faith, as well as other monotheistic faiths.” In other words, he stands by his comments and believes them to be true. He is just disappointed that people were offended at hearing his version of the truth. No one has called this out.

Let’s be clear: Abbas hates Jews, not Judaism. The persistent truth is that Abbas has always hated Jews as foreign interlopers in Palestine. For example, he has said that a new state of Palestine will be welcoming of all religions (that would include Judaism), but the PA has existing laws that call for the execution of any Arab that sells land to a Jew. Conclusion: it’s the people, not the faith.

Abbas is a peddler of nasty lies, and many of them are not new. The only additions from the April 30 speech to Abbas’s long history of vile comments are that Jews were at fault for their own massacres because of their “function,” and that they came from Khazar, but these are simple extensions of his prior comments.

So why the sudden uproar?

The Media Has Long Concealed Abbas’s and Palestinians’ Jew Hatred

The United Nations and world media have long defended and protected Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinians in their quest to give the SAPs independence and sovereignty. They have ignored the antisemitism and terrorism from Palestinian Arabs and placed the blame on Israel, as acknowledging Arabs’ hatred of Jews undermines the very notion of peace and justifies many of Israel’s actions.

Palestinians are inherently good, but have become antisemitic because of Israel. The world and liberal press are hard-pressed to charge the SAPs with any wrong-doing. When confronted with something unsavory about the Palestinians, the press tries to paper it over, such as absolving the Palestinians of their overwhelming (93% of people according to the ADL) hatred of Jews. In covering the ADL findings, the New York Times wrote “the Middle East results were not particularly surprising.” Is that because everyone knows that Arabs hate Jews? If that’s obvious, why the sudden commotion about Abbas laying it out clearly in April 2018?

Palestinians “Resort to Violence.” The New York Times actually wrote in 2012 that the virulently antisemitic terrorist group Hamas “took control of Gaza in 2007 and is backed by Iran, is so consumed with hatred for Israel that it has repeatedly resorted to violence.” The Hamas Charter clearly and repeatedly calls for violent jihad and the destruction of the Jewish State. However, the liberal media crafted an alternative reality to make the people of Gaza victims “resorting to violence” instead of being terrorists.

Palestinians are moderate; Israelis are right-wing. The world was so eager to market Abbas as a “moderate,” that it ignored his history of vile comments, because if the leader of the Palestinian Authority was a moderate, his demands were presumably reasonable, and vice-versa. The failure of any peace discussions must therefore be on the “right-wing” (as the liberal press peddled) Israeli leadership.

Palestinian actions are unhelpful; Israeli actions are harmful. Nickolay Mladenov, the United Nations special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, said in reaction to Abbas’s April 30 antisemitic rant: “Such statements are unacceptable, deeply disturbing and do not serve the interests of the Palestinian people or peace in the Middle East.” Seriously? “Do not serve the interests of the Palestinians?” When Mladenov talks about Israeli settlements in the West Bank, he does not say they are unhelpful, he says they are “threatening the viability of the two-state solution and eroding the prospects for peace.” Somehow noxious antisemitism is not an impediment to peace, only Jews living in houses in their holy land.

These factors have been at play for decades. So why the sudden turn on Abbas? Why would the NY Times write an editorial on May 3, 2018 “Mr. Abbas’s Vile Words” that “by succumbing to such dark, corrosive instincts he [Abbas] showed that it is time for him to leave office.” Abbas has always been vile. He has always negated Jewish rights and history in Israel and has been effective at getting United Nations and the liberal media bodies to support his narrative.

I suggest that there are two main points at play here. One has to do with the alt-left narrative of Palestinian reform and the other with the left-wing attempts to parse antisemitism from Anti-Zionism.

Antisemitism and Anti-Zionism by the Global Left-Wing
and by the Arab and Muslim World

Palestinians continue to reform, and are thereby worthy of sovereignty. For several years, the western world has sought to portray the Palestinians as progressing from their violent and antisemitic past (plane hijackings, murdering of athletes, intifadas) to a moderate stance of co-existence.

Consider the New York Times on May 5, 2018 claiming that while Abbas wrote his doctoral thesis on Holocaust denial (over Abbas’s 13 years of heading the PA, the Times mentioned this disgusting fact only a few times) it pretended that he recanted. “In 2014, on the eve of Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day, he [Abbas] issued a formal statement calling the Nazi genocide ‘the most heinous crime to have occurred against humanity in the modern era’ and expressing sympathy with the victim’s families.” But Abbas then tied the Holocaust to the plight of the Palestinians, as though there is a remote equivalency between the slaughter of millions of defenseless Jews in the Holocaust to the failure of the Arab armies to destroy the nascent state of Israel. Abbas said “The Palestinian people, who suffer from injustice, oppression and (are) denied freedom and peace, are the first to demand to lift the injustice and racism that befell other peoples subjected to such crimes,” calling Israelis racists like Nazis. That’s not really recanting his book on Holocaust denial when he equates the Jewish State with Nazi Germany.

However, his latest comments provided no room for liberal cover. Abbas’s April 30 gratuitous slander against the Jewish people highlighted a disgusting worldview that can never live at peace and negotiate honestly with the Jewish State. The liberals’ carefully constructed fig leaf of Palestinian moderation was obliterated.

Antisemitism and Anti-Zionism. For the Arab world, it has always been one and the same. The Palestinians elected Hamas to 58% of the Parliament in 2007 with statements in its charter that included:

“Our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious.” Preamable

“In face of the Jews’ usurpation of Palestine, it is compulsory that the banner of Jihad be raised.” (Article 15)

It is specifically the presence of Jews in Israel and its territories that offends Arabs and Muslims. They don’t believe that Jews have any rights to be in the land and want them gone. As such, they forbid the teaching of the Holocaust in UNRWA schools and find nothing objectionable about Abbas’s latest speech. The Arabs are both antisemitic and anti-Zionist. One is part-and-parcel of the other.

Yet the western world that views itself as progressive has been at pains to tease apart anti-Zionism and antisemitism. Liberals have argued that criticism of Israel cannot be conflated with antisemitism. As such, vilifying Jews OUTSIDE of Israel is considered an offensive comment and clearly antisemitic, such as saying that Jews were to blame for the Holocaust. However, slamming Israeli Jews is fair game, such as when the BBC said that Israeli teenagers were partially responsible for their own murder since they should not have been hitchhiking in the West Bank. The world was content in blaming the victim in the case of Jews in Israel and the Israeli territories. For the alt-left, no Israeli can ever be a pure victim nor any Palestinian Arab a true criminal.

Abbas’s speech was treated with a yawn in the Arab and Muslim world, as antisemitism and anti-Zionism have long been a single cause. But it has confounded the western self-declared “progressives” who are doing their utmost to criticize Israel without the moniker of “anti-Semite” staining their liberal bona fides. As such, they are throwing Abbas under the bus rather than considering their own disturbing positions. Off with Abbas’s head.

The New York Times has a Jew problem, or more specifically, a huge problem with any Jews living in parts of the “Arab Middle East.”

In a March 8, 2018 article called “No Man’s Land: New U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem May Lie Partly Outside Israel,” the Times came up with a new term that was both meaningless and said much about how the liberal paper thinks of Jews living east of the 1949 Armistice Lines.

In describing the planned relocation of the U.S. embassy to an area in Jerusalem that possibly partially sat in the ‘No Man’s Land’ that existed between 1949 and 1967, the paper wrote:

“The dispute could turn the American ambassador, David M. Friedman, an avid supporter of Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank, into a new kind of diplomatic settler himself.”

That’s quite a phrase, “diplomatic settler.” It’s also completely nonsensical. U.S. ambassadors are U.S. citizens, not Israeli. How can an American be a settler? Simply by being Jewish?

There was a time that a “settler” meant any Israeli that moved into a new development over the Green Line in Judea & Samaria / the West Bank. The physical new town was known as a “settlement” and the inhabitants were known as “settlers.” The homes defined the people.

Over time, a pro-Palestinian narrative took hold in much of the world which inverted that formula. For them, the people (settlers) define the homes (settlements). Specifically, any Israeli Jew that lives over the invisible Green Line is known as a settler. (This is in sharp contrast to Israeli Muslims – like the thousands of Arabs in eastern Jerusalem that have taken Israeli citizenship – that are never considered “settlers.”) Presumably, the rationale for focusing on people is based on a very broad reading of Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention that Israel’s policies enabling Jews to live in the land that it took from Jordan in 1967 is effectively a “transfer of population,” possibly runs counter to that international law.

But The New York Times moved the definition of a settler yet again, in a giant anti-Semitic leap.

For anti-Zionists like the New York Times, ANY Jew, regardless of citizenship should be considered a settler if they live east of the Green Line. Hence the U.S. ambassador to Israel would become a “diplomatic settler,” simply because he’s Jewish. If the U.S. Ambassador to Israel were Christian or Muslim or Buddhist or any other religion, presumably the diplomatic settler moniker wouldn’t stick.

“Businessman Settler:” Any Jewish traveler doing business in Jericho who keeps an apartment in the city

“Student Settler.” A foreign Jew studying in the West Bank

What would happen if the United States decided to recognize a State of Palestine along the lines agreed to thus far between the principles, in Gaza and Area A of the West Bank, and established a U.S. embassy in Bethlehem. If that U.S. ambassador to Palestine was Jewish, I guess the Times would also label him a “Diplomatic Settler.” Only a non-Jewish diplomat could avoid having such title, and not be branded a colonialist interloper.

On March 8, 2018, Isabel Kershner wrote an article for the New York Times called “No Man’s Land: New U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem May Lie Partly Outside Israel.” The article described that the location of the U.S. embassy would partially lie outside of Israel’s 1949 Armistice Lines with Jordan in an area known at the time as the “No Man’s Land.” It attempted to explain the terminology through a history lesson about the area.

But being the New York Times, the history would be incomplete and distorted.

Consider the opening of the description:

“No Man’s Land encompasses the area between the armistice lines drawn at the end of the 1948-9 war and was claimed by Jordan and Israel. Israel won full control of it in the 1967 war, so the United Nations and much of the world consider it occupied territory.”

As the NY Times does at every occasion, it describes Israel’s administration of Judea and Samaria with a statement that the world does not recognize Israel’s claim and considers the land “occupied territory.” Yet the Times will never print – even here in an article meant to clarify the nature of the land – that Jordan’s claim on the entirety of the West Bank/Judea and Samaria was never considered valid.

The omissions would continue.

Kershner wrote that she would give some clarity to the nature of the land:

“After the 1948 war surrounding Israel’s creation, Israel signed an armistice agreement with Jordan, which controlled the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The sides demarcated the armistice line on a map in grease pencil. Where they did not agree they drew their own lines staking out maximalist positions – the Israelis in green, as far as possible to the east, the Jordanians in red, to the west.

The disputed enclaves, called the ‘areas between the lines,’ were under neither party’s control and came to be known as No Man’s Land.”

Note the many problems of the first sentence. It states that no party is to blame for the 1948 war. A person would never know that the armies of five Arab countries invaded Israel at its creation by the first half of the sentence. The second half would lead a reader to conclude that the Jordanians naturally had controlled the West Bank and East Jerusalem. This is deeply flawed. The Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan, as today’s Jordan was known back in 1948, invaded and illegally annexed Judea and Samaria and the eastern half of Jerusalem. To state that Jordan simply “controlled the West Bank and East Jerusalem,” makes that illegal seizure seem normative and historic. It was neither. It was an invasion in an offensive war to destroy Israel.

The problems in the “historical unpacking” would continue:

“After 1949, both Israel and Jordan claimed the territory, holding that its status would be determined in an eventual agreement. When the 1967 war broke out, the Jordanian and Israeli armies fought over it.”

The 1967 war didn’t simply break out. Jordan attacked Israel first (again), after Israel repeatedly told the Jordanians to not initiate a war. The point is not a subtle one, as the laws regarding the seizure of land in a war are arguably not the same in a defensive war as an offensive war. Especially when the party that initiated the hostilities (Jordan) had zero claim to the land they occupied (all of the West Bank, eastern Jerusalem and the No Man’s Land!)

In short, the article focused squarely on Israel’s claim to a part of Jerusalem counter to a Jordanian claim that the paper wrote about as a historical reality. In truth, the Jordanians NEVER had an legal claim to any of the West Bank or eastern Jerusalem, and rescinded the false claim to that land 30 years ago.

Jerusalem was divided for roughly 19 years of its 4000 year history, from 1948 to 1967. But the New York Times will continue to try to slice and divide Judaism’s holiest city at every opportunity to minimize the Jewish State’s ties to its capital.

The “Every Picture” series describes the use of photographs in newspapers to relay a particular narrative. For papers like the New York Times, the pictures are usually used to show Israelis as attackers and Palestinians as victims. On March 9, 2018, it opted to show the Palestinians as liberated liberals and the rest of the world as trapped in the misogyny of the patriarchy.

International Women’s Day was held on March 8, 2018. The liberal New York paper chose to write about the day’s activities as a combination of a celebration and the protest of the #MeToo movement in which women came forward to describe gender-based assaults.

In the article called “Beyond #MeToo: Pride, Protests and Pressure,” the paper chose to publish four pictures from around the world.

The large picture on top of the page was one of protest, taken in Milan, Italy of women protesting violence. The next two pictures were much smaller and showed a memorial in Mexico dedicated to murdered women, and women taking part in a taekwondo ceremony in Kenya.

The picture of peace and happiness was reserved for Gaza in a large photograph at the bottom of the page. In the photo, a young girl rode on her horse in sheer delight, as an older man escorted her on her jaunt. The message was clear: you see what the Gazans can do on their own if Israelis were not blockading and bombarding them? They are enlightened and celebrate women.

Did it ever discuss the Palestinian law (inherited from the Jordanians) that gave men who killed their spouses a reduced sentence for such horrible murders. No. (The law is actually being reviewed to be overturned. Then it will probably get some air as it will make them look modern.)

Has the paper discussed the many restrictions placed on women by the ruling authority Hamas, such as veil coverings in public, banning men from cutting women’s hair, preventing women from running in marathons, etc,? No.

You see, the ills of the world and the plague of the patriarchy are found everywhere except in Gaza. That is the message of the alt-left publication. To think of Hamas and Gazans as genocidal, anti-Semitic, misogynistic terrorists is the height of Islamophobia.

There are certain types of hatred that stand apart as evil. Without any basis or rationale, some people choose to hate others simply for who they are as inferior and despicable human beings.

The Media’s Treatment of White Men,
including Richard Spencer

In the current heated political environment, the mainstream media has written extensively about the “alt-right,” the white male prejudice. It continues to highlight the system of “patriarchy” of older white men, based on a primitive notion of “cling[ing] to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations,” as Barack Obama stated in 2008. Obama’s fellow Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi commented similarly in 2016 that “white — non-college-educated white males have voted Republican… because of guns, because of gays, and because of God, the three G’s, God being the woman’s right to choose.”

The media gave significant coverage to such white narrow-mindedness, focusing on a particular person, Richard Spencer.

In articles and editorials from late 2016 until now, The New York Times reported on “White Nationalist Richard Spencer“”s speaking engagements and protest marches. The pieces quoted the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which tracks hate groups, about Spencer’s background as “a well-known leader of the so-called alt-right, a far-right fringe movement that embraces white nationalism.”

Picture of fights breaking out at Richard Spencer talk at Michigan State University on March 5, 2018, as shown on HuffPo

These are stories to be covered, and the media used much ink to tell the stories.

But the media would remain mum – completely silent – on the racism from the black and Muslim communities.

The Media’s Treatment of Black and Muslim Men,including Louis Farrakhan

Various agencies produce reports of hate crimes and opinions around the world. The FBI produces a report on hate crime statistics in the United States every year. The media’s coverage was a pathetic analysis that opted to echo its narrative that white men are racists and blacks and Muslims are victims.

As reviewed in “The NY Times Discolors Hate Crimes,” the paper chose a header for its reporting “U.S. Hate Crimes Surge 6%, Fueled by Attacks on Muslims” in 2016, even though attacks on Jews dwarfed the number of attacks on Muslims. An analysis of the statistics would have shown the likelihood of white people committing a hate crime dropped in half between 2001 and 2015, and that black people were much more likely to commit a hate crime than white people.

The reporting would be skewed again in 2017, as detailed in “Black People are Homophobic,” which showed how black people are statistically much more likely to commit anti-Semitic and anti-LGBT crimes than white people. But the media would not write about it.

When the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) produced a survey of anti-Semitism around the world in 2015, which clearly demonstrated that Muslims were two to five times more likely to hate Jews than Christians living in the same country, the media also remained silent.

So it was not a surprise when the noted black Muslim leader Louis Farrakhan delivered a vile anti-Semitic speech on February 25, 2018, that the NY Times would not mention it. His comment that “White folks are going down. And Satan is going down. And Farrakhan, by God’s grace, has pulled the cover off of that Satanic Jew and I’m here to say your time is up, your world is through,” would not reach The New York Times’ readers. The SPLC review of the Minister of Hate detailing the hatred of his Nation of Islam group, including “While Jews remain the primary target of Farrakhan’s vitriol, he is also well known for bashing gay men and lesbians, Catholics and, of course, the white devils, whom he calls “potential humans … [who] haven’t evolved yet.”,” would remain hidden.

Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan said the “Jews were responsible for all of this filth and degenerate behavior that Hollywood is putting out.” (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio)

Racism and anti-Semitism are noxious and terrible, and should be covered by the media. When the mainstream media only highlights racism and anti-Semitism when it is promoted by white men but fails to cover it when it comes from blacks and Muslims, which is much more prevalent, it is worse than #AlternativeFacts. It is racism itself.

The New York Times blatant bias towards the Palestinian narrative was in stark display in articles reviewing the speeches given by the acting-President of the Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas to a large audience of politicians in Ramallah on January 14, 2018, and of the one given by US Vice President Mike Pence to the Israeli Parliament on January 22, 2018.

Hiding Palestinian Violence

The Times article appeared on the top of page A8 accompanied by a color picture of Abbas. The article relayed Abbas’s speech with supporting commentary throughout the article. Only at the very end of the piece, did the Times offer any competing viewpoints.

During its supporting description of Abbas’s speech, the Times deliberately chose to portray Abbas as a man of peace and hope.

NYT:“Indeed, Mr. Abbas, who reaffirmed his commitment to non-violence and stopping terrorism, seemed to hold out hope of a return to negotiations – but with someone other than the United States leading the way.”

Abbas: “We always and forever adhere to negotiations as the path to reach a political settlement with Israel. We don’t want war. We will not call for a military war with Israel. Whoever has [weapons] – go ahead and do it. I say this out in the open. If you have weapons, go ahead. I’m with you, and I will help you. Anyone who has weapons can go ahead. I don’t have weapons. I want the peaceful political path to reach a settlement.”

Not only did the Times chose to negate the remarks in which Abbas supported those who used terrorism, the paper opted to not give any clarification about why the United States has been accusing Abbas for supporting terrorism:

Abbas: “The Americans are always telling us that we must stop paying salaries to the families of the martyrs and the prisoners. We categorically reject this demand. Under no circumstances will we allow the families of the martyrs, the wounded, and the prisoners to be harmed. These are our children, our families. We are proud of them, and we will pay them before we pay the living.”

Why didn’t the paper use the Abbas statement to comment that Congress had voted on the Taylor Force Act to demand that the PA stop paying terrorist to kill Jews? Because if it did so, it would be shining a light on the despicable Palestinian action promoting murder?

In regards to reconciling with a terrorist group, the Times would add no color that the US designates Hamas as a terrorist group. It merely stated that “reunification” was a chance to bring the two physical Palestinian territories together, but it made no mention of incorporating the anti-Semitic terrorist group into a governing role in the Palestinian Authority:

NYT: “Addressing hundreds of P.L.O. members, Mr. Abbas urged the Council to emphasize unification talks aimed at bringing Hamas, the Islamic militant group that rules the Gaza Strip, into the Palestinian fold. ‘A state without Gaza is not possible,’ he said. ‘A state in Gaza is not possible.’”

Instead, the Times talked of Abbas as a man of hope, a man who continued to push for a two-state solution and peaceful coexistence with Israel:

NYT: “Mr. Abbas, 82, stopped well short of embracing an alternative to a two-state solution, the project around which he has built his career. The number of Israelis and Palestinians who hold out hope that such a solution can be achieved is dwindling, but Mr. Abbas said nothing about abandoning it.

“He also shied away from urging the kind of provocative acts, like ending the Palestinian Authority’s security cooperation with Israel or disbanding the authority itself, that could raise the costs of occupation for Israel and shake officials in Jerusalem and Washington.”

The Times did not clarify why so many people have become disillusioned with a peace based on a two-state solution, such as an intifada running from 2000 to 2005, and wars raging from Gaza in 2008, 2012 and 2014 killing thousands, even after Israel withdrew all civilians and military forces from Gaza in 2005.

When the Times opted to mention the vile screed of Abbas that the Jews have nothing to do with Israel, it did so at the very end of the article, with an introduction that let people dismiss the content, and with a conclusion that allowed the statement to stand.

NYT: “Testing his audience’s attention, Mr. Abbas also gave a lengthy history lecture reaching back to the 17th century, saying that Oliver Cromwell had first proposed shipping European Jews to the Holy Land, before tracing the beginning of Zionism to what he called the 19th-century journalist and activist Theodor Herzl’s efforts to ‘wipe out Palestinians from Palestine.’

“’This is a colonial enterprise that has nothing to do with Jewishness,’ Mr. Abbas said. ‘The Jews were used as a tool under the concept of the promised land – call it whatever you want. Everything has been made up.’

Did the Times attack this fake history? No. Did it call out Abbas’ rewriting of the entire Old Testament? No. Did it mention that Abbas also claimed that the Arab countries didn’t really evict a million Jews? No. Did it recount Abbas’s doctoral thesis on Holocaust denial? No. Did it mention that the United Nations has similarly been denying Jewish connection to Jerusalem? No.

The sloppy New York Times journalism gave a pass to Abbas’s #FakeHistory, and allowed its readership to question the very legitimacy of the Jewish State, just as the Palestinian narrative demands.

Hiding Pence’s Truth

On January 23, 2018 the Times covered the speech that Vice President Mike Pence delivered to the Israeli Knesset. The article would feature no picture of Pence standing in Israel’s capital of Jerusalem.

To begin, the Times did not begin to quote Pence until paragraph 9, compared to paragraph 2 in the Abbas story. The Times needed to lay the groundwork of how upset the Palestinians were to frame the article:

NYT:“Palestinians claim Jerusalem as their capital or believe it should be divided, with East Jerusalem becoming the capital of a Palestinian state.”

No Times clarification that Palestine is not yet a state.

NYT: “The international consensus, previously supported by the United States, has been that the city’s status can be determined only through negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians.”

The Times deliberately misled its readers that that the Trump administration had said the same.

NYT: “Arab lawmakers rose to their feet at the start of Mr. Pence’s speech in the Israeli Parliament and held up signs reading ‘Jerusalem is the capital of Palestine.’ Ushers pulled down the signs and escorted them out of the room, to the applause of others in the hall.“

The phrasing did not make clear that the standing ovation by the members of Knesset was in favor of expelling the Arabs and drowning out their protest.

NYT: “Mr. Trump has also threatened to shutter an office of the Palestine Liberation Organization in Washington and cut American donations to the United Nations agency that provides services for Palestinian refugees.“

Once again there was no detail that Trump was taking these moves because the Palestinians support terror and refuse to come to the negotiating table.

NYT: “That approach has been welcomed by many Israelis, while rankling with Palestinians, whose political and religious leaders have refused to meet Mr. Pence.“

The Times took its time to set up the article that everything that Pence had to say was objectionable and unwelcome. It did nothing of the sort to introduce the Abbas speech.

Throughout the Pence article, in paragraph after paragraph, the Times countered every statement with a Palestinian narrative, a complete reversal of the Abbas article a week earlier when a counter-opinion of the Israeli perspective was only given at the very end of the article, and then, only muted.

NYT: “We stand with Israel because we believe in right over wrong, in good over evil and in liberty over tyranny,” Mr. Pence said.

“Mr. Pence, an evangelical Christian, dotted his address with biblical references and spoke of the Jewish connection to Jerusalem in historical and religious terms.“

Correction: Pence’s initial remarks had to do with the broad connection between the United States and Israel, one of “shared values.” He spoke of George Washington, John Adams and Abraham Lincoln who supported the great contributions of Jews to America and the world, and their rights to live in the Holy Land.

Did the Times write that Abbas is an Arab Muslim when he belittled the Bible? Nope. But it decided to highlight Pence’s religion. It was a setup for the ‘messianic extremist’ comment by Saeb Erekat to come later in the article.

NYT: “He scarcely mentioned the Palestinians and did not refer to their history in the Holy Land, nor to their territorial claims.”

Did the Times write about the 3700-year history of the Jews in Jerusalem during the Abbas speech write-up? About the Jewish Temples? That Jews have been a majority in Jerusalem since the 1860s? No, why would it? The Times is part of the Palestinian propaganda machine.

NYT: “The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, will not meet Mr. Pence. He has called Mr. Trump’s Jerusalem declaration ‘a slap in the face.’

“Saeb Erekat, the chief negotiator for the Palestinians, said that Mr. Pence’s ‘messianic discourse’ was ‘a gift to the extremists.’

“‘His message to the rest of the world is clear: violate international law & resolutions and the US will reward you,’ he said, according to his office’s Twitter account.”

Quite some airtime for the Palestinian point of view.

In the final paragraph, the Times opted to slam Pence yet again in another distortion of facts:

NYT: “Mr. Pence canceled his last planned trip to the Holy Land before Christmas after Christian Arab leaders declined to meet with him.“

The Times gave a podium to a man that negated the history and rights of Jews in Israel and who supports terrorists both in language and money, printing 304 words of Abbas’s speech. It did not challenge a single word of his screed. Meanwhile, the paper took great pains to negate and belittle the US Vice President’s remarks, printing a mere 45 words of Pence’s speech.

The New York Times has been advancing the notion that liberal values are popping up in the Middle East. Despite the actual murder and mayhem brought by the “Arab Spring,” the Times published articles about the advancement of women’s rights in Iran and Saudi Arabia, as well as the acceptance of the gay and lesbian communities in Lebanon.

These recent phenomena may be true, but it is interesting that Israel is never mentioned in the articles – the one country that has equality for women and the LGBT community.

LGBT Rights

Consider the December 31, 2017 article “Coming Out in Lebanon, and Helping it to be More Tolerant.” The article detailed that most of the countries in the Middle East have laws punishing homosexual activity, naming several Arab countries before highlighting the unique position of Lebanon:

“Throughout the Middle East, gay, lesbian and transgender people face formidable obstacles to living a life of openness and acceptance in conservative societies.

Although Jordan decriminalized same-sex behavior in 1951, the gay community remains marginalized. Qatar, Sudan, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen all outlaw same-sex relations. In Saudi Arabia, homosexuality can be punished by flogging or death.

In Egypt, at least 76 people have been arrested in a crackdown since September, when a fan waved a rainbow flag during a concert by Masrou’ Leila, a Lebanese band with an openly gay singer.

If there is one exception, it has been Lebanon. While the law can still penalize homosexual acts, the society has slowly grown more tolerant as activists have worked for more rights and visibility.”

This is preposterous. The “one exception” of tolerance “throughout the Middle East” is Israel, not Lebanon.

The International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association (ILGA) produced detailed reports about the countries of the world that protect or criminalize LGBT relationships. In every year, Israel stands out as an island of acceptance for the LGBT community for thousands of miles.

From Morocco to Taiwan and from South Africa to Russia, there is a single country that has laws protecting the LGBT community. And it is not Lebanon, but Israel.

The New York Times December 31, 2017 article on page 10 claiming that Lebanon is the only country in the Middle East with gay rights.

Women’s Rights

On December 29, 2017, the New York Times published an article on its cover page called “Unlikely Iranian-Saudi Race: Easing Restrictions on Women.” The article advanced the notion that Iran and Saudi Arabia are both slowly easing restrictions on women in their countries in a competitive environment of liberalization. Saudi Arabia changed laws allowing women to drive, so Iran eased the law regarding women wearing a hijab.

The article quoted “Suad Abu-Dayyeh, a Palestinian who is the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) consultant for Equality Now, a global women’s advocacy group.” The article noted that “she was cautious about concluding that the changes in Iran were related to the Saudi relaxation,” but she did state that “any advancement in any country will really affect the situation in the neighboring countries.”

And still, the New York Times did not mention Israel which leads the MENA region in women’s rights.

If the Times really believed in the concept that it opted to cite, that the activity in one country could influence the actions in neighboring countries, why not mention the country that leads the entire region in human rights, especially for women and the LGBT communities? Is it too remarkable to assume that the countries in the region are trying to catch up with Israel, whether in technology, the economy or human rights? Saudi Arabia announced its Vision 2030 plans just a few months ago, as noted by the NY Times on October 25, 2017, that the country needed to move beyond oil into technology. Are all of these events regarding the economy and human rights simply coincidences with no relationship to the marvel of Israel next door?

In the closing days of 2017, the Times sought to educate its readership that the Muslim and Arab countries are in the process of liberal reformation – on their own. The paper did so while deliberately excluding the factual presence of Israel in the Middle East and its possible positive influence of reforming the Muslim nations in the region.

The New York Times has moved beyond the “pinkwashing” of Israel into new levels of #AlternativeFacts.

After US President Donald Trump announced that the United States is officially recognizing the fact that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel on December 6, 2017, many Arab and Muslim countries sought to make a declaration.

They doubled-down on putting their heads in the sand.

Turkey pulled together the 57 countries of the Organization of Islamic Countries, the OIC, to condemn the statement of the United States. Turkey’s President Tayyip Erdogan said that Jerusalem was a “red line” for the Muslim world and the OIC would reject any recognition of the eastern half of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

Turkish President Erdogan at OIC Summit(picture: Reuters K. Ozer)

That statement is a bit of a joke, as most of the countries in the OIC don’t even recognize Israel itself.

Even in 2017, almost 70 years after the reestablishment of the Jewish State in the holy land, the presence of Jews still irks too many Muslim nations, including: Afghanistan; Algeria; Bahrain; Bangladesh; Brunei; Chad; Comoros; Djibouti; Indonesia; Iran; Iraq; Kuwait; Lebanon; Libya; Malaysia; Mali; Mauritania; Morocco; Niger; Oman; Pakistan; “Palestine”; Qatar; Saudi Arabia; Somalia; Sudan; Syria; Tunisia; UAE; and Yemen. That’s 30 countries that do not recognize the State of Israel that came together to say that do not recognize its capital.

How is this news?

Here is something that would be ground-breaking for the global purveyors of #AlternativeFacts:

It would be news if the anti-Zionist media would ever state this basic fact that these countries are deeply hostile to Israel in any form.

It would be news if the media would not refer to “Arab East Jerusalem” in all caps as if it is an actual entity with endemic Arab roots.

It would be news for the media to state that “East Jerusalem” only existed for 18 years (1949-1967) in the city’s 4000 year history.

It would be news if the media would ever educate readers that Jews have been a majority in Jerusalem since the 1860s.

It would be news if the media ever wrote that the Jordanians expelled all of the Jews from eastern Jerusalem and the “West Bank” in 1949

It would be news if the media would give proper background that under Arab Muslim rule, Jews were forbidden from even entering the Old City of Jerusalem.

It would be news if the media would stop saying that Jerusalem is holy to Muslims, Christians and Jews ALIKE, as if the city isn’t uniquely the holiest city ONLY for Jews

It would be news if the media would bother to inform its readers that the man who called together and hosted the summit, Erdogan, is the major sponsor and backer of Hamas, the most anti-Semitic terrorist group that waged three wars against Israel in just the past ten years, and that he is still angry at Israel for recognizing an independent Kurdistan.

A squandered opportunity to show yet another example of the deep hatred that Muslims feel towards Jewish sovereignty in their holy land.

Instead, the media decided to report that a country like Iran, that has called for Israel to be wiped off of the map, is angry about the US recognizing Israel’s capital. Really.

The NYT led readers to believe that Jerusalem was an Arab city and that Jews recently began to immigrate there, when IN FACT, Jews have been a majority in Jerusalem since the 1860s

The NYT led readers to conclude that Jerusalem has never been important to Jews, and that it is just a recent phenomenon of right-wing Zionists, when IN FACT, Jerusalem has been central to Judaism for 3000 years for all Jews

The NYT will talk about the “corpus separatum” of the 1947 partition plan, but only refer to Jerusalem, when IN FACT, the Holy Basin referred to Greater Bethlehem and Greater Jerusalem, and Israel gave control of Bethlehem to the Palestinians 20 years ago

Below are some details highlighting the liberal rag’s distortions.

The Myth of Colonial Fingerprints

The lead-in to the article began to orient the reader about distinct 20th century aspects to the current conflict surrounding Jerusalem. It stated:

“the current one is a distinctly 20th century story, with roots in colonialism, nationalism and antisemitism.”

The article would go on to describe the nationalism of “religious settlers,” but never touch upon the deep antisemitism pervasive in Palestinian culture and actions.

Jewish Majority in Jerusalem for 150 Years

The article repeated long-standing #FakeNews by anti-Zionists that Jews were new-comers to Jerusalem, invading an Arab city:

“The three decades of British rule that followed Allenby’s march on Jerusalem saw an influx of Jewish settlers drawn by the Zionist vision of a Jewish homeland, while the local Arab population adjusted to the reality of the collapsed Ottoman Empire, which had ruled the city since 1517…. For Arabs, he said: ‘There was something of the shock at not being in the Ottoman Empire. There was a reordering of their society. The local Palestinian aristocracy, the big families of Jerusalem, emerged as leaders of the Palestinian national movement, which was suddenly being confronted by Jewish migration. Opposition to that migration fueled several deadly riots by Palestinians…‘”

This is an outrageous lie. The Times would have readers believe that there was an Arab majority in Jerusalem for 400 years. These “local Arabs” watched helplessly as the British allowed these foreigners to take over their city.

There were various demographic studies taken of Jerusalem for the past few centuries. They all agree that Jews have been a majority in the city since at least 1870, with the percentage growing well before the British took over in 1922.

Jerusalem population statistics from the JewishVirtualLibrary, which compiled statistics from a variety of places:

Regardless of the source of information, Jews were clearly the dominant religious group in Jerusalem for as much as 30 years before the first Zionist Congress, and 50 years before the Balfour Declaration. To state that the Jews were interlopers into an Arab city is patently false and a complete inversion of history and fact.

This is part of an ongoing false narrative that the New York Times gives its readers even regarding current events. For a despicable example, read “The New York Times will Keep on Telling You: Jews are not Native to Israel,” in which every Israeli – even those whose parents and grandparents were born in Israel – was described as a foreigner, while every Arab was described as a local.

The 1947 Partition Plan Included Bethlehem

The Times continued to go over history, touching upon the 1947 UN Partition Plan.

“After the war, in 1947, the United Nations approved a partition plan that provided for two states – one Jewish, one Arab – with Jerusalem governed by a ‘special international regime’ owing to its unique status. The Arabs rejected the partition plan,… Jerusalem was divided: The western half became part of the new state of Israel (and its capital under an Israeli law passed in 1950), while the eastern half, including the Old City, was occupied by Jordan.”

The Times will forever refuse to correctly state that the Holy Basin in the partition plan was much larger than just Jerusalem, and included Greater Bethlehem.

Israel handed control of Bethlehem to the Palestinian Authority in December 1995 as part of launching the Oslo Accords with some tangible results. That concession of handing over half of the corpus separatum is never mentioned by the Times.

The Crimes of Jordan

The fact that Jordan’s annexation of the West Bank, the eastern half of Jerusalem and Bethlehem were not sanctioned by the international community is NEVER mentioned, while the world’s opinion about Israel’s taking of the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem is ALWAYS mentioned.

The fact that Jordan evicted all of the Jews from the eastern half of Jerusalem and the West Bank is NEVER mentioned.

The fact that Jordan gave citizenship to all Arabs in the newly acquired territories but specifically excluded Jews is NEVER mentioned.

Because for the Times, the problem is the Jews.

The Lie that Israel Doesn’t Care about Jerusalem

Throughout the article, the Times sought to portray Israeli Jews as ambivalent about Jerusalem as a capital city:

“It was the for the British that Jerusalem was so important – they are the ones who established Jerusalem as a capital… It was not anyone’s capital since the times of the First and Second Temple.”

“Paradoxically, Zionism recoiled from Jerusalem, particularly the Old City,.. first because Jerusalem was regarded as a symbol of the diaspora, and second because the holy sites to Christianity and Islam were seen as complications that would not enable the creation of a Jewish state with Jerusalem as its capital.”

“Jerusalem was something of a backwater, a regression to a conservative culture that they [early Zionists] were trying to move away from,”

“The early Israeli state was hesitant to focus too much on Jerusalem, given pressure from the United Nations and European powers,”

“Having accepted the idea of international control of Jerusalem, the early Israeli leadership sought alternatives for a capital, perhaps Herzliya or somewhere in the south,”

Get the message? Israel really was never focused on Jerusalem until the 1967 war, according the Times.

But how does that warped narrative fit into the following facts:

Jews moved to Jerusalem both before and after the British Mandate took effect in remarkable numbers, as detailed above

Israel made Jerusalem its capital shortly after the war of independence concluded, in 1950. It placed all of its governmental buildings there.

All of these facts about the early Zionists also doesn’t include the facts that Jews have always faced Jerusalem when they pray, regardless of where they are in the world. They pray for the return to Jerusalem and the reestablishment of the city to its former glory, several times a day.

How does the Times spew the absurd notion that Jerusalem is a novel idea to Israeli Jews?

Jerusalem is Important to All Jews, Not Jewish Extremists

The Times narrative continued that this once irrelevant city all of the sudden jumped into the minds of religious extremists after the Six Day War in 1967.

“The turning points in 1967 were two: the great victory, including the fast shift from fears of defeat before the war to euphoria and the feeling that everything was possible, and the emotional impact of occupying the Old City…. Images of Israeli soldiers praying at the Western Wall… became seared into Israel’s national consciousness.”

“Jerusalem became the center of a cultlike devotion that had not really existed previously…. This has now been fetishized to an extraordinary degree as hard-line religious nationalism,”

“The victory of the right-leaning party Likud in 1977… helped solidify this new emphasis on Jerusalem as integral to Israel’s identity. Religious settlers became more prominent in political life in Israel,”

“As part of this shift, Jerusalem’s symbolic importance intensified,”

It is unquestionably true that many religious Jews flocked to Jerusalem. They have been doing so for thousands of years because it is the most holy city in Judaism. They are not “right-leaning” or “religious settlers.” They are people who came to live in their holiest city.

As further evidence of the long-standing importance of Jerusalem to the entire country – even the “secular European socialists” that the article highlighted – was Israel’s adoption of a particular menorah as its national emblem in 1949: the one that was pictured in the Arch of Titus in Rome. That menorah symbolized the ransacking and destruction of the Second Jewish Temple in Jerusalem 2000 years earlier. The deliberate selection of that menorah as the symbol of the Jewish State of Israel was to show that the Jews had returned from the diaspora, to its sacred land and holiest city, Jerusalem.

Today, the entire Jewish people continue to be engaged about Jerusalem. The current controversy surrounding creating a pluralistic place for prayer at the Western Wall is because of the strong interest of Reform and Conservative Jews for Jerusalem. The notion that the city is only important to “cultlike… religious settlers” is absurd.

Jews Belong in Eastern Jerusalem

The Times continued its horrific background by concluding that Jews have no rights to be in the eastern part of the city:

“Palestinians say that Jewish settlers have encroached on East Jerusalem,”

“‘The entire international community has been in accord that Israeli annexation and settlement of East Jerusalem since 1967 is illegal, and refuses to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital,'”

As the Times never explained to readers that all of the Jews were evicted by the Jordanians in 1949, it made their appearance in the eastern half of the city seem strange and foreign. It is not. Jews returned to parts of their holiest city where they lived for centuries.

The Times also did not give background to the international laws of 1920 (San Remo) and 1922 (Mandate of Palestine), which both clearly and explicitly stated that Jews could live throughout Palestine – including the Old City of Jerusalem – and that no person could be excluded from living anywhere in the land due to religious beliefs.

Oh, and for those keeping score that Israel limits Arabs in Jerusalem, look at the statistics above again. Under the British from 1922 to 1948, the number of Jews and Arabs BOTH went up by three times. From 1967 to 1995, the number of Arabs in Jerusalem under Israeli rule tripled again, while the number of Jews only went up by 2.5 times. How does the Times keep giving people the impression that Jews overran the Arabs during British rule (when both groups grew by the same percentage) and that Israel has been forcing out the Arabs from Jerusalem (even though the growth of Arab residents surpasses Jews!)

As the world waited for the United States to recognize the reality that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, the New York Times fed its readers anti-Zionist red meat. It crafted an article that Jews never much cared for the Arab city of Jerusalem until 50 years ago, and that the only Jews who really care about it now are religious fanatics. The masters of #FakeNews are trying their best to instigate a jihad.